Old FURIOUS nads! by The One True b!X

More than a decade ago, I co-organized what at the time was the largest-ever grassroots-based, online petition drive, in opposition to the anti-speech provisions of the Communications Decency Act, which eventually was adopted nonetheless, but also eventually went on to suffer at the hands of the United States Supreme Court.

That landmark effort (which inspired a more comprehensive petition by one of the many organizations fighting the bill, and later landed me in the pages of Rolling Stone, of all bizarre things), was called Hands Off The Net!

Which is my segue into linking today’s Willy Week article on the debate over net neutrality. Because, as the article and sidebars report, the industry group pushing for the abandonment of the net neutrality principle calls itself Hands Off The Internet.

I find it offensive not because I used the phrase over ten years ago, but because back then the phrase was a rallying cry in support of the freedom of expression online and the marketplace of ideas. But today, in the hands of industry flacks, it’s being used to support the opposite belief.

Despite what you will hear from some people, the net neutrality debate is not about passing laws which will prevent network owners and operators from combatting spam, throttling the abuse of resources, preventing denial of service attacks, or otherwise being able to properly maintain the infrastructure of the Internet.

What it’s about is preventing large corporate media and communications companies from being able to serve to you their own content, and those of their partners, at higher rates of speed than the content of competitors or independents.

In the end, with the industry stealing a slogan once meant as a defense of free expression and turning it into one in opposition to free expression, those who still support that principle are left with the alternative: Save The Internet — which, I guess, perhaps more adequately describes the immediacy of what’s at stake.

This entry was posted on Wednesday, July 26th, 2006 at 12:30 pm and is filed under Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.